Stig Dagerman - Island of the Doomed

Paul started rapping the bed end with his knuckles; he’d found an infernal way of grating on her nerves by a rhythmical succession of words, rapping and silence.

‘Have your fun, then. But when are we going to stop receiving these anonymous letters from people who take pleasure in tormenting me, and the signed letters from types who think they might get a reward for exposing the spicy situations they’ve seen you in? Or the anonymous telephone calls, those kind of telephone calls are always anonymous, which torment Mile Claire day in, day out? I didn’t marry a whore, but it’s a funny thing: you don’t marry whores, but one fine day you discover you’ve got them in the house nevertheless.’

More rapping. Then silence.

‘Why don’t you answer? Why don’t you say what you’re thinking: I didn’t marry a cripple. No, but you married an old man, because your father had been cooking the books. Shame and disgrace were looming, and you were his only chance of salvation, by marrying a rich man.’

‘Oh, why do you keep on tormenting me with the same old thing?’

‘I’m not the one who ought to be tormented, you are. And anyway, you’re not going to be tormented, just punished. You’ll get just punishment this time, but look out: next time it might be unjust. And you shouldn’t keep going on about blackmail, not even to yourself; I can read your thoughts, you see.’

More rapping. Then silence.

‘You know full well it’s not blackmail. Of course, it is true I won’t let you go without withdrawing all financial support for your father and his family; but once you’re caught, you’re caught — and that applies to both parties. And then there was some talk about punishment. It isn’t even a question of punishment, come to that; it’s just a simple penance for an unfaithful wife. You see, my charity is almost boundless, I’m ready to forgive almost anything. I expect you know the old penance for unfaithful wives: they have to go on their knees all round a church, carrying a candle. Well, you can choose your own day and your own time as long as it’s this month, that’s how charitable I am. For instance, you could do penance on a rainy day when not many people are around, and so there won’t be many who see you. Mile Claire will go with you as a witness. I’ve also bought a couple of dogs to keep you company so that you won’t get lonely in future, and a new caretaker’s due to start work any day now: he’s ugly and has only got one eye, so you won’t be tempted to seduce him. As you can see, I’ve only got your best interests at heart. But I really do insist you do your penance, not least in view of your father’s financial state.’

That day she slunk out of Paul’s room with a broken back, and it took a very long time to heal, especially as, nowadays, she wasted far too much time hunched up over postage stamps and photographs. Her skin grew grey and dirty, and the ageing process was rapid and ruthless. She rarely looked in the mirror any more, but when she sat in with Paul for a while every morning and every afternoon, her decline was reflected in his satisfied eyes.

‘The penance did you good,’ he said, ‘you ought to go to church more often. You don’t need to crawl on your knees any more.’

More rapping. Then silence.

She planned so many things now, but her knees were still sore after her penance, and her back was far from well again. She thought about the long German bayonet hanging on the wall over his bed as she was polishing her tarnished memories. But she was on friendly terms with the new caretaker until, one day, she noticed how eagerly he was watching her with his good eye, how intimately, more so with each day that passed. He went up to her room whenever Mile Claire wasn’t at home, and one evening he tried to kiss her in the Euridyce niche upstairs. She complained to Paul, and he said, ‘That’s right, you fight for your virtue.’

This period was weighed down by shadows and insidious premonitions, darkness held sway behind the pillars of this vast house, and Claire kept the blinds down in several rooms. She complained that the dust coming in from the street was so awful. Eventually all contact with the outside world was lost, and the house stood there like a memorial stone raised over a small number of living creatures who were barely alive: only the inscription was missing. No one went out of the dead house any more, and messenger boys came round with goods which they handed over to Claire or the caretaker on the doorstep; she herself would stand high up on the landing, watching wild-eyed as a thin white beam of light filtered into the hall through the crack in the door. She had an enormous desire to scream, not because she was afraid, but she thought there were far too many silent rooms in this house. She wandered about imagining which instruments could transform them with music: the cello room, the grand piano room, a little niche for the xylophone. She imagined what kind of screams would suit some rooms but be out of place in others; she imagined for instance what a scream would sound like in Paul’s room or her own or Claire’s or the porter’s cubby-hole.

One night when everything was quiet in the house and outside in the street, and as usual she was lying wide awake in her big oak bed, she got the urge to try just a little scream, to see how it went. She opened her mouth, and it was amazing how easily it slipped out. It was a little bit louder than she’d expected, and she was so frightened when it echoed back at her that she soon fell silent and waited in fear in case somebody had heard it and would come racing up to investigate. But everything was so quiet. So she calmed down again and lay there, trying to remember what it had sounded like. She couldn’t quite remember, but she thought it had probably been a little bit too highly pitched for this dignified room; but as she didn’t really have more than one scream as yet, she had to find another room where it might be more suitable. So she crept quietly along the corridor, opening all the doors. She started with the lounge overlooking the street, then passed slowly through the five rooms, screaming in all of them. She paused for a while and pondered when she’d finished, and decided she’d have to lower her voice at least an octave before the scream was anywhere near appropriate for the sobriety and solid good taste characteristic of the furniture. She went back through the rooms in reverse order, just screaming and listening at the same time to hear whether they would do.

It still wasn’t quite right. The screams had a vulgarity of style that must have been due to her opening her mouth too wide, so she’d have to close it slightly when she tried for a third time. But there was no third time. Mile Claire and the grim-faced porter came rushing in from opposite directions, obviously as arranged in advance, knocked her to the ground, stuffed rags into her mouth and pinioned her arms. She twisted about and tried to spit out the gag so that she could explain it was all just a refurnishing exercise, but they were too strong for her, they managed to drug her somehow or other, and she woke up one day exhausted and terribly hot, and found them standing beside her bed, keeping an eye on her and each other.

‘Madame, we’re going out; we’re going to church,’ said Claire.

They went to church, but not to the one where she had done her penance. Now she took her hands away briefly, and looked up. Oh, that brick-red colour, that colour which becomes so strangely clear and bitter just as the sun is setting. The tower rose upwards through the domed clouds, the edge of the sun that hadn’t yet drowned, and the sea stretched out as lifelessly as an etching plate; the tower of the red monastery church, overshadowing all else, at times dissolving into a yellowy-red mist, the mist emanating from blast furnaces and smithies nestling down in the valleys; but it emerges again, rising up from the mists, more recognizable every time, more lovable, more painful when seen from so far away.